Later Days Might Fight School Daze

HOWARD GOODMAN COMMENTARY

Congratulations to the school district for proposing to shift its high school schedule so that it conforms to the way teenagers actually live and breathe.

Forest Hill High in West Palm Beach and Boca Raton High have bravely stepped forward to start later.

Each has volunteered to be the test school in an experiment to push the usual 7:30 a.m. opening bell back to 8 a.m. or even 9.

The district is reacting to research that shows teenagers require more morning rest than the rest of us. It cites studies from august universities such as Brown and Johns Hopkins.

Among the findings, teenagers need eight to 10 hours of sleep each night, but average less than 7 1/2. Many teens have trouble falling asleep before midnight.

Did we really need science to tell us this?

The resistance of teenagers to the alarm clock is no big secret. It's known to every reader of the comic strip Zits.

The geniuses who commissioned these studies could have saved themselves a lot of time and money simply by spending a few days at my house.

They can tag along on those mornings when I step into my 15-year-old's darkened bedroom during the 6 a.m. hour to say, "Wake up," only to be met by groans, grunts, deep sighs and a moan:

"Five more minutes."

I give him 10. I try again.

Same reply: "Five more minutes."

Now I turn on the lights and the stereo. He pulls the covers over his head.

I yank the covers away. He plunges his face in his pillow.

That's when I try the fly swatter, the cattle prod, the Taser.

Just kidding, you folks over at the Department of Children & Family. Just kidding.

Eventually, he gets up, though I wouldn't say he awakens. A long shower and a breakfast of eggs and toast don't penetrate the fog. He walks out the front door forgetting first his book bag, then the homework that belongs in the book bag, then the saxophone he'll need for band practice.

As he trudges off to school, I am reminded of the moment in the Marx Brothers' Horse Feathers, when Groucho, as president of Huxley College, suggests tearing down the college.

"But, professor, where will the students sleep?" he's asked.

"Where they always sleep," Groucho snaps. "In the classroom."

This is just biology.

Think of it as the Waking Phases of Human Development.

When you are a baby, you wake up extremely early, often at ear-splitting volume, as if to punish your parents for ever having been single and free to sleep in on Sundays.

When you are a little kid, you still get up on the early side, because you know cartoons are on TV.

Then you hit puberty and your body races through a whole host of chemical changes. It needs to catch up on its sleep after expending so much energy deepening your voice (male) or expanding your chest (female) and ramping up your interest in shopping malls and the opposite sex.

Then you become a working stiff. And to fulfill the evolutionary need of feeding one's family, your body clock resets itself to morning rush hour. You learn to get up and function whether you like it or not.

Then you retire and move to Florida and your body returns to that infant-like state of waking up early. This is nature's way of making sure you wash the car at 6 a.m.

So it's nice to see educators taking this small step toward recognizing reality. Let's hope they actually follow through with the idea and let a high school or two tinker with a later start time.

If they really wanted to improve the learning of teenagers, however, they would try something far more radical.

They would give teachers monikers like "Answer Man," put their classes on Instant Messenger and start them around 9 p.m.

Judging by the way our home computer lights up at night, that's when Teenage America is most awake.

Howard Goodman's column is published Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. He can be reached at hgoodman@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6638.